Never a Mistake
by Tina T
Summary: Liz left after EOTW. Can everyone else handle who she's become?
1. Prologue

Title: Never a Mistake  
  
Author: Tina T  
  
Rating: PG-13 ish  
  
Category: M/L  
  
Summary: Liz left after EOTW.  
  
Disclaimer: Not mine.  
  
~~~~~ Prologue  
  
Liz POV ~~~~~  
  
We never planned on it. We should have known though. Together, we never could handle ourselves. We let the teenage hormones get the best of us. I guess that we just assumed that with the freedom from our teen years, we would gain freedom from those feelings too. We were wrong.  
  
It had always been different between us. It wasn't just a hopeless teen romance. We had something, but we were both too scared to follow it. Sometimes I think that's the only thing that adulthood has freed us from. We no longer fear what we have, though now we should more than ever.  
  
I was the one who finally ended it. I was seventeen and I had just been told that I really wasn't destined to be with the man I loved more than I had ever thought my innocent, naïve heart could. I did the only thing that I could. I ran. It was easier than I had thought. I just left. I didn't tell my parents. I didn't tell Maria. I cut the strings, and for once, I laughed in destiny's face. I gave up on trying to beat it, and I simply refused to feel the pain again.  
  
I was in college when I met Jerry. He always took the chair beside me in English, but he didn't say a word to me for the first four months. Finally, when I dropped my pencil on the floor between us, he picked it up and we started to talk. We didn't start dating for another month. It took him two years to propose. On graduation night he pulled me from the group and slipped the ring onto my finger. I cried. We were married that summer. That was two years ago this July. I saw Max again last January.  
  
It was so simple, and yet so amazing. It was just a grocery store. I was just out to get dinner. It was just like every night had been for months, but it was so different. It changed my life. It broke my heart. Of course, before I had no heart to break. 


	2. Hands

~~~~~  
  
Chapter One  
  
Liz POV  
  
~~~~~  
  
Portland was nothing like Roswell. It wasn't quite as popular, but it wasn't small, and the tourists that it did get didn't ask a thing about UFOs. It had scenery and stores. It was a balance, and, as Max had explained to me once before, I needed to find my balance again. I found it too, and it fell right on its ass as soon as we saw each other.  
  
I didn't notice all of the things that that night had in common with the last night that I had seen Max. It was a mix of both of my homes. It was raining. It rained for about three weeks every year in Roswell, and the day I left it poured. In Portland it rained everyday, but not like that day. It poured, but it was a couple degrees warmer, and the sun lingered until six or seven o'clock that night, unlike its normal passing at around five.  
  
The night was just what normal had come to become. Jerry asked what we were going to have for dinner and I found myself at the store. I went straight to the poultry section, wanting to leave as soon as possible. I didn't even hear my name being called until his hand fell on my shoulder.  
  
"Liz, is that you?"  
  
~~~~~  
  
Max POV  
  
~~~~~  
  
I think that the only thing that I could say about Liz Parker as I saw her in that store was that she had changed. She was no longer the innocent girl that I had known. The innocence was all but gone, replaced by a maturity that I knew had come with years of trial and painful mistakes, and in place of a girl there was a beautiful woman. She had blossomed into something wonderful, and I had not been there to see her through it.  
  
I would have liked to think that I would have just known that she was there, like it was something in the stars, and they were making sure that we would find each other. Unfortunately, I had long ago given up on any aid from anyone from outside of the group, and it was only through many hardships that I had come to place true faith in them. As for Liz, I honestly think that, had the rain not brought me to think of her, I may have walked right past her, never knowing how close I had been to finding the one that I had looked so hard for.  
  
She didn't look like she had on the last night that I saw her, the last night that she saw Roswell. Her hair was slick with rain, which I had remembered from that night, but now it was cut to just above her shoulders. I could still remember the feel of it, dripping from a mixture of her own tears and the rain that fell heavily from the shy, from the last time I wove my hands through it. I could still remember the feel of her lips against mine, salty with her tears, as she pressed herself against me, her only way of really saying goodbye. I shook my head and refocused on the present. It was Liz! It was my Liz! The thought had become almost unbelievable.  
  
I walked up to her slowly, unsure of how she would react to me. "Liz, is that you?" She turned, and I knew that she recognized my voice. Her eyes looked over me, gauging just how cruel the years had been to me. Her eyes finally met mine and for once I couldn't read her. I felt a muffled pain at that thought, but I squashed it quickly, knowing that no matter what, Liz could still read me.  
  
"Max? Oh, my God, it's you isn't it?" She threw her arms around me and for that moment things all felt right. Liz Parker was back in my arms, we were sixteen, and in the end we knew that we would be together. She pulled back slowly, as if she wanted the illusion just as much as I did, but we forced ourselves back into the lives that were now ours and stood staring at each other under the harsh glare of the supermarket lights. "How have you been? How is-everyone?" I could tell that she wanted to ask about Maria and Alex, but she couldn't bring herself to mention them.  
  
"They're good. Almost everyone's in Roswell for the holidays. God Liz, what have you been doing all this time?" I wanted to pretend. I wanted to pretend that it was normal to just run into her after all these years. I wanted to pretend that she still didn't have such a strong effect on me. I wanted to convince myself that I wasn't pretending.  
  
She smiled at me, and opened her mouth to answer, but her eyes turned past me for only a moment and her entire persona changed. "I'm so sorry Max, but I have to go." She pulled a chicken from the rack behind her and placed it in the little basket that she held. She turned back to be before she left. "Listen, there is a little coffee shop on sixth and market. It's right by where I work. Meet me there tomorrow around noon and we can catch up." She gave me another quick smile and then rushed away. As she walked up to the counter I turned to see what had lit such a spark in her. A clock sat on the far wall.  
  
~~~~~  
  
When I got back to my hotel room the phone was ringing. Only Isabel and Maria knew my number, so I knew that it was someone from home. I rushed in and picked up. It was Isabel.  
  
"Isabel, I was just about to call you. You won't believe what happened to me today," I began, but I didn't get to finish.  
  
"No, Max, listen I've been calling you for an hour. We need you to come home right away. It's bad. It's really bad." I could hear her start crying and Maria's voice came to replace hers.  
  
"Maria, what's going on?" I asked, overcome by an image of legions of alien armies attacking Roswell and holding my sister and friends captive.  
  
"You need to get back here right now Max. It's your dad. He's really sick. They don't know what's wrong. We need you here. Isabel thinks he's dying." Maria lowered her voice at those words and I could hear Isabel nearly choke on a sob.  
  
My breath caught. "I'll be on the next flight in." I didn't remember my date with Liz until I was flying over Nevada.  
  
~~~~~  
  
Liz POV  
  
~~~~~  
  
I couldn't keep from smiling as I approached my house with dinner in the back seat of my car. I knew that Jerry would want to know what had taken me so long, but he always thought that I took to much time. He always said that I dawdled too much at the store. In the beginning I had thought that it was cute. I had taken it to mean that he didn't like to be away from me. Slowly it became apparent that it was not at all about me. It was about him not getting what he wanted the instant that he asked for it.  
  
I gathered the groceries and started up the path to my door. There were only two small steps separating me from the door when I realized that something was missing. With my spare hand I reached into my pocket and pulled my ring out, slipping it back into its place on my left hand. I tried to figure out why I had done it, but nothing would add up. The only answers that I could come up with didn't work with the life that I now possessed. They lead to feelings that were supposed to have passed years ago. Finally I entered my house, still battling the solutions that were forming in my mind.  
  
The first thing that passed my eyes was the bottle. It took mythic proportions in my mind, over sizing the small coffee table that sat in front of the little brown couch. The TV was on, and the six o'clock anchorwoman was reading off the headlines of the day. It all barely registered in my mind though. All I could think of was the bottle, for I had come to learn that it was the true source of all evil in the world.  
  
I had dared to hope. After seeing Max again, I had let myself hope. It was the first thing that he made me remember, but it was in vain. I had forgotten to fear, and sometimes fear is more useful than hope, because fear depends on no one else.  
  
Next came to footsteps, as they always did. Their origin was always new, but they always came at the sound of the door, like a dog to the beep of the microwave. His were clumsy and booming, beating hard against the soft white of the tile. He stumbled into the wall, knocking something to the floor, and a curse word broke free from his mouth. I closed my eyes, knowing what was to come, and knowing that there was no way to stop it.  
  
He staggered into the living room a moment later, and I could see that whatever he had broken had put up a fight. Blood was slowly oozing from a long gash across his hand, his left, the dominant. I stepped back into the corner between the door and the wall, cornered. The knob bit into my side, but I knew that by the time I got it opened again he would be on me. I couldn't run.  
  
"Where have you been?" His voice was crude, harsh. I clutched the groceries more tightly to my chest as he advanced, using them as my shield.  
  
"I-I went to get dinner," I stuttered, slightly gesturing to the bag in my hands. He stepped closer and looked into the bad. He lifted his face to mine and I could smell the beer on his breath.  
  
"You know that I don't like chicken," he bellowed, and suddenly the groceries were no longer in my hands. I hear them crash into the far wall, but I did not dare turn away from him. "Why the hell did you get that shit- and what the hell took you so long? What the hell were you doing at the damn store?" His eyes narrowed on mine as if he could read them for the answer, and I stood, silently willing my body not to shake.  
  
"You don't even go to the store, do you?" he screamed; my hands reflexively grasped the doorknob. "You're whoring yourself off to someone, aren't you?" I briefly thought of Max but still managed a tiny movement in the negative. He paid no attention though, and his hand, smeared with his own blood rose into the air and, in the tiniest piece of a second, came down upon my tender cheek. My head whipped to the side and slapped harshly against the wall as my hand rose from the knob to protect my cheek. He instantly tore it away though, taking pride in marking me with a bruise. He threw my hand back to the door.  
  
"Get your ass in the kitchen and make dinner," he boomed. I shrunk into the door a little more as he walked back to the couch and threw himself down. I took what I could of the groceries, all the while keeping my distance, and went for the sanctuary of the kitchen.  
  
~~~~~  
  
Max POV  
  
~~~~~  
  
Isabel, Michael and Maria were waiting for me when my plane landed. I looked out at them with jealousy. Michael and Maria stood together, with Michael's arm draped protectively over Maria's shoulder as they looked at me with worried smiles. Isabel stood slightly to the side with her arms crossed and her head aimed at the ground. Her wedding ring shone proudly from its place on her finger. I still couldn't believe that she had been the one to settle down first, and, even odder, she had fallen for Alex. They had been married for almost a year, and I had never seen Isabel happier. I was glad for her, but I still could not help the fact that it hurt to see that other people did get the happy ending, and, somehow, it always seemed to be just a couple inches out of my reach.  
  
"Thank God you're back Max," Isabel said, throwing her arms around me. "We need to get back to Dad." Isabel pulled back and started to lead us from the gate.  
  
"So Maxwell, how was the great Northwest?" Michael asked as we went for the baggage claim. It was obvious that he was trying to lighten the mood. I could tell he had no doubt that, no matter what the problem turned out to be, I could fix it. Sometimes their faith in me scared me, and, I knew, sometimes my lack of faith scared them.  
  
"It's definitely got some treasures," I said, knowing that I had not answered him at all. I looked at Maria. "I need to talk to you when we get back. I found something that I think you'll really like."  
  
Maria smiled broadly as we all tried to keep up with Isabel's hurried pace. I could see the wheels in her head turning, and, for the moment, she wasn't thinking about whatever waited for us back in the innermost part of Roswell. "You got me a present? What is it? Will I like it?"  
  
Michael looked at me pointedly. "Are you trying to upstage me Max?" he asked, but there was a smile on his face by the time he finished the question.  
  
I looked back to Maria. "I guarantee," I said, "you'll love it." ~~~~~ The years since Liz had left had not been easy for any of us, and we were just finally getting back to normal. The skins were off our backs, and Khivar was a world away. In the end, we had decided that our human lives were more important to us than a place at the throne. We never looked for him, and, as far as we know, he has never bothered with us either. We let Zan, Rath, Ava, and Vilandra rest. Their time was over.  
  
After we defeated the skins, the group fell apart. Everything had been chaotic when Liz took off, and no one had had time to think about it. We felt it, but we didn't really let ourselves think about it until we were safe enough to break down. When it came down to it, Kyle didn't want to be one of us anymore. He is a loyal friend, but we have not spoken since we graduated, and I am really not sure how much we talked even when we did share a school. As for Maria and Alex, they drew inward, and pulled back from the group. They never left though, and I know that they will always be here for us. Tess up and left one day, and we haven't seen her since. I think that she came to see that she just wasn't one of us, and I think that she realized that she didn't need to stay with us anymore. She could find a real home.  
  
The balance came after college. We all split up with Alex in California, Maria in New York, Michael working in Roswell, Isabel in Boston, and me in Las Cruces. We needed the time alone to realize who we were again away from the group. In the beginning being in "the group" was like being a puzzle piece. We all had to work to find our places and how we fit together. Over the years our unique-ness, our designs, had faded into one. We were squares, and we needed to find our shapes again. College let us do that, but in the end we all came home. Alex came back with offers from all kinds of tech companies, Maria returned as a burgeoning vocalist, I was finishing med school, and Isabel was taking up the torch our parents had passed and becoming a lawyer.  
  
We made a new puzzle then, but even with all of our changes, something- someone-was always missing. Liz never found her way home.  
  
~~~~~  
  
Liz POV  
  
~~~~~  
  
Darkness finally fell, veiling the house with its shadowy claws. Jerry had passed out on the couch as soon as he ate, and I went to our room to go to bed. As I stepped in front of the mirror, I turned to look at myself. There was no sign of the seventeen-year-old girl that Max was expecting to see tomorrow, and if I had changed, I could only imagine how he had.  
  
My thoughts turned to my ring. I really didn't know why I had taken mine off and I didn't want to think about it. All answers lead only to more questions, and most were questions that I didn't want to answer. I couldn't help thinking about Max's life though. Who was to say he didn't have a ring that held claim on him? Who was to say that he hadn't fallen to the snares of destiny after all? Who was I to think that my ring could fall to the depths of my pocket, and his was bound to his finger? For all I knew, the boy that I had loved was now the man who held another's heart.  
  
I shook my head, not wanting to think of Max's new life. I wanted to be Liz again, his Liz. I wanted to be the seventeen-year-old that he knew so well. I looked at my face which was already starting to bruise. I had yet to wash away the blood from Jerry's hand and I could not help thinking back to the last time a handprint had branded me. This was far different though. This print screamed of pain and burned blood red, so unlike the healing touch of silver that had marked me once before. Max's touch I couldn't keep from fading, and Jerry's I would have scrubbed away, had it not been entombed by the darkened purple that so often claimed my skin.  
  
That wasn't the real difference though. The true difference could not be seen. The true difference lay with in me, and it was an unchangeable face.  
  
The truth was that Max's touch was forever embedded onto my soul. Jerry's couldn't be forced past my skin. 


	3. Memories

~~~~~ Part Two Max POV ~~~~~  
  
I asked Maria to help me carry my bags when we pulled up to my childhood home. All the lights were off when we pulled up, but as soon as Isabel ran in, it began to come to life. It was the little piece of Roswell that I didn't think had ever changed, and I cherished that.  
  
Michael followed Isabel, knowing that I needed to talk to Maria and that that was why I had asked her instead of knowing that he would help or just doing it myself. I had only two bags, so Maria and I stood by the back of the car for a moment, both knowing that we weren't still out because of the luggage, but neither knowing how to start the conversation.  
  
"What do you want Max?" Her question wasn't said bitterly, or even with the slightest hint of agitation; she really just wanted to know. January in Roswell could get chilly, or at least we thought so, and neither of us really wanted to just stand outside like that.  
  
"I need you to go to Portland," I told her. I smiled slightly. "I left your present there."  
  
Her eyes narrowed on me. "What?"  
  
"I found something-someone-in Portland. I promised to meet them tomorrow, and you need to keep that date for me." I turned my hand over, showing her the address which I had written down moments after Liz had fled the store. "There's a little coffee shop at this address. Can you be there by noon?" She nodded. "Can you make up a plausible excuse for leaving on such short notice? I don't think that anyone else needs to know about this just yet."  
  
"Well, of course Max, but who is it?"  
  
"I found Liz," I said. I picked up my bags and left Maria to gawk at the place where I had been standing.  
  
~~~~~  
  
I had almost forgotten why I came back to Roswell on such short notice- almost. When I walked into the house, it instantly hit me. It was just. darker there. Every light in the house was on, but something was missing. There was a feeling, a dread almost, that made it all seem very grave and somber. That was when I realized that they had waited until the very last moment to call me.  
  
My parents had been the last ones that we had told. Isabel had finally won our battle, and my wedding gift to her was the truth for our parents. Of course, as Maria told me, Isabel would need something solid also. That was why I got her the toaster. I don't think that she liked that as much as she would have, had it been on her gift list.  
  
I had never seen my father look quite as fragile as I did that night. I could tell that he couldn't move from his place beneath the pounds of blankets that my mother had placed on him, and I could see the frightening shade of gray that had consumed his skin. "Has a doctor seen him?" I asked, taking on my normal pre-med persona.  
  
"No Max, you're our doctor," Isabel said, quickly growing irritated.  
  
"You still should have taken him in," I told her. "I'm only a med student Isabel. You can't just rely on me for all of this. Just because I can heal doesn't mean I can fix everything. Plus, I would know more about what was wrong."  
  
"We didn't want to take the chance of it not being normal," Michael said. "Things may have cooled down for the time being, but we didn't want to risk being sloppy and having things start up again. I, for one, have liked this piece of normality that we've had."  
  
"Alright, but why would you think that someone would go after Dad?" I asked, placing my hands on either side of my father's head. "I mean, aren't we generally the targets?" Through the connection I now had with my father, I began to look for something wrong with him. I asked him what he felt with our shared mind, and he began describing symptoms from more diseases than I cold name. I spent the next hour healing him, and I began to think that my sister may have been smart in not taking him into the ER. When the glowing in my hands finally faded I told my father to get some rest and went to my old room to do the same. The brigade followed me.  
  
"Max," Isabel said, a tremor in her voice, "why did that take you so long?" I sighed and ran a sweaty hand through my hair.  
  
"I think that it may have been a very smart decision to not take Dad to the doctor." Isabel's eyes clouded with fear and she looked back and forth between Michael and me, slowly, just as she had with every attack that we had ever had during our high school years. "There's just no way that he could have that many problems. Someone would have caught sight of something years ago. I mean, he had everything from Polo to the flu to the common cold. It's just-it's impossible."  
  
"Great," Michael said. "So I guess vacation's over. What are we going to do? This has to be alien."  
  
"Who could have done this Michael?" Isabel asked, rubbing her forehead. "I mean, we got rid of everyone. Who's left?"  
  
"Maybe it's Khivar," Maria mumbled. Three pairs of eyes turned to her. "What? I mean, he's the only other one that we know is out there. He's the loose end. Plus, you either believe that you have that one man left, or you believe that there is another species out there that has the ability to infect a man with dozens of diseases. I vote for Khivar."  
  
Isabel sat in the char by my desk and began to rock herself. "Oh God, I thought that this was all over. I thought that we were done. We left him alone. Why is he coming after us after all these years?"  
  
"He's a tyrannical leader," Michael mumbled, "and he thinks that we're a threat. He build a freaking species of human snakes to come after us. I'm just glad that he's finally got off of his ass and came after us himself. At least now we can end it once and for all." I saw Maria looked at him, about to say something, but she stopped. If hope came with the theory that there wasn't another species after us, and it was just the run of the mill evil genius with insurmountable alien powers, she wasn't about to crush it just because she could.  
  
"Look, I think that we should all just go to bed for tonight," I said, beginning to feel the wear from my flight and then an hour of healing. "We can talk in the morning."  
  
"You can talk without me," Maria said, remembering our earlier conversation. I had to give her credit. I didn't remember what she was talking about until she grinned at me from under place beneath Michael's arm. "My agent called me out. I've got to go tomorrow. He wants me to record another demo."  
  
"I don't think that you should go," Michael said, becoming no more protective than usual. "Now isn't the right time."  
  
"Michael, this is my dream. I won't give up my dream for some psychopath. Plus, I'm probably safer away from here. They won't go that far out of the way just to get me."  
  
"But-"  
  
"No, I am not going to be locked in by this. I'm living my life Michael. I'm going."  
  
"I'll take you to the airport," I told her. Michael and Isabel looked at me, but didn't say anything. In silent agreement, everyone left my room, at least for a few minutes, but just as I began to fall to sleep, Maria came back in.  
  
"Max," she whispered, nudging my shoulder, "Max, wake up."  
  
"I'm awake," I mumbled, not opening my eyes.  
  
"I need tickets. They won't just let me on the plane because I'm pretty."  
  
Had I been more awake, I would have had a witty reply for that, but I already had one foot inside the dream world. "Take my credit card. Call one of the airlines, and get yourself on an early flight."  
  
"Okay-"  
  
"And Maria," I added as an afterthought, "I mean really early."  
  
"Yeah, I got it." She sighed and I could hear her grab my wallet from the desk where I had thrown it. "Early," I heard her mumble as she closed my door. It was bound to be interesting.  
  
~~~~~  
  
Maria's POV  
  
~~~~~  
  
Max didn't realize what he was getting into when he told me to get him up early. Granted, I'm not a morning person, but Max didn't add the fact that I hadn't seen my friend in over half a decade into the equation. Maybe that was why he was so surprised when I go him up at three o'clock to go to the airport. My flight was at six, but I wanted to be there as soon as possible. Max rolled back over and slept for another half hour while I got ready. I finally got him up with a glass of very cold water hovering over his head.  
  
He was pretty much silent during the whole ride to Roswell's tiny airport. After I got checked in he went and got us both coffees from one of the vending machines in the runway hallway since nothing else was opened yet. He told me that as soon as the Cinnabuns opened he would go and get us breakfast. Beyond that he didn't really speak unless I started talking and forced him to answer me. I could tell that he was dying because he had to stay in Roswell.  
  
"She will understand Max," I told him. "It's not your fault. It's not like you're just ditching her. I mean, if things get bad, I could always tell her what the flight cost, as a last resort, of course."  
  
Max arched his eyebrow at me. "How much could the ticket have possibly cost if it makes up for me not coming?" I looked at him. "Never mind, I don't want to know."  
  
"It won't even come up Max. She'll understand. You're father was sick. You had to come home."  
  
Max's eyes widened when I mentioned his father. "Maria, you can't tell her what I told you about my dad. Don't elaborate on his sickness." He looked at the floor, but I had still caught the flash of guilt in his eyes. "I don't want to draw her back into this."  
  
"I still don't understand why everyone else couldn't know that you found her."  
  
"She's not ready for it. I don't think that she was ready to see me there. She'll come back if she wants to see everyone. It should be her choice. I shouldn't have even told you."  
  
"Don't you ever try to keep something like this from me! She was my best friend. If Alex were in town, I would be pulling him along with me, and you know that. You did the right thing by telling me and don't you ever doubt that."  
  
"In your eyes, I know I did. I just don't know how she will feel about it."  
  
"All that you can do is hope for the best. Don't put this on your shoulders too Max. This is not, in any way, your fault. Relax while I'm gone. Spend time with your family. Don't go looking for trouble. With what we found out last night it may be one of your last chances to relax for a while." I looked over my shoulder and saw the lights at the Cinnabuns store turn on. "Now you have a promise to keep. Maria needs sugar to go with her caffeine this morning."  
  
~~~~~  
  
Liz POV  
  
~~~~~  
  
Jerry was gone when I woke up. I didn't know if he was down at the bar or actually at work, but I was happy for the quiet. My clock said ten o'clock when I finally bothered to read it, and I thanked God for the fact that I had the day off. Somewhere between coffee and a shower I found myself thinking back to a time when bruises only came from clumsiness and beer was only for parties.  
  
Jerry had not always been a violent man. I never would have gotten as close to him as I did if he had started out like that. He was as gentle as a teddy bear when we first met. On our first date he took me to the local amusement park and won me a goldfish and a Tasmanian devil stuffed animal. He had dropped me off at my dorm room with a simple kiss on the cheek and plans for another date. He realized that I had been hurt, and he took it slow.  
  
He didn't ask about my past. When I asked him why, he told me that he wasn't a part of it, and so he wanted to focus on our future. He didn't pressure me when I couldn't bring myself to take the next step with him, and when I finally was ready his touch was more gentle that anything I had felt in a long time. With him, I found myself letting go of the past. The hours that I spent with him were hours where I didn't think about Roswell or anyone that I had known there. I wasn't crying over Max or wondering if Maria had finally gotten Michael on her leash when I was with him. I saw myself looking to the future, and then a future with Jerry had seemed very promising.  
  
It wasn't until after college that things started to get bad. Jerry had trouble finding work, and I was still in college, finishing the classes that I needed to pursue a job as any kind of scientist. Jerry was the one who had told me not to give up on anything that I wanted. He was also the one that told me that we couldn't pay for college on just his time to time jobs. He was the reason that I dropped out and started looking for work. Once he even asked me why I refused to ask my parents for help. I told him that I didn't want to go back to my past. He scoffed and left the room.  
  
That was when I started to notice that he was drinking more. He would come in the middle of the night smelling of beer and tell me that he had been working the graveyard shift. I wanted to believe him. I really wanted to think that he was still the good man that I had fallen in love with, but I was starting to forget that man, just as I thought I had forgotten the rest of my past.  
  
It wasn't long after he started drinking that he started hitting me. Looking back, that's where I really knew that I was no longer the little girl from Roswell, New Mexico. Strong, opinionated Liz Parker would never have let a man treat her like I let Jerry treat me. I refused to admit that I had ever been that girl though, so I didn't compare myself to her.  
  
When I looked at the clock again, I realized that it had been almost an hour. I pulled myself out of bed and hurried to get ready, using cover up to camouflage to black and purple bruises on my face and a long sleeved sweater to cover the large purple blemish on my arm. I grabbed my purse and my jacket and left, glad that I was gone before Jerry came back from where ever he was.  
  
~~~~~  
  
Max POV  
  
~~~~~  
  
I left Maria as she boarded her plane. I told her that I wanted to see her off, but she would have no such thing. She told me that I should go get presents for my family as a way of explaining why I just had to accompany my best friend's girlfriend to the airport. I reluctantly agreed, knowing that it would lessen the onslaught of questions that were sure to come.  
  
I couldn't help thinking about the brown haired beauty that had occupied more of my adolescent thoughts that I cared to admit as I stepped into the airport gift shop. I knew that I should have looked for something better considering I really had forgotten to get them anything while I was on my actual trip, but I was far too tired from my flight and then Maria's early morning wake up call to think straight.  
  
I could remember the night that Liz had left like it was yesterday. The rain had poured down in sheets, and, for the first time, I couldn't seem to block it out. Too much was going through my mind. I could still see Liz and Kyle lying on her bed beneath a mess of sheets, laughing over old memories that I could never be a part of. I could still hear her speech about Romeo and Juliet echoing in my ear. I want to be in love with boys. normal boys. The thought of life without her seemed unbearable. Little did I know it was something that I would be faced with all too soon.  
  
I had heard her knock, barely audible over the sound of the rain beating down on the house. I held my hand out to her as she climbed in, and my heart soared as she wrapped her petite fingers around mine.  
  
She dropped my hand as soon as she was in the door, and I finally took the time to look at her-to really look at her, and for once, something made me forget all about her and Kyle. One look into her deep brown eyes told me that she wasn't about to set all things right. She wasn't going to tell me that it had all been a lie, and that she loved me through it all. No, in her eyes I saw the one emotion that still seems to be stronger than love- defeat.  
  
She looked at the wall behind me and asked if I would dry her off. She dropped the duffel bag she had been carrying on the floor, finally drawing my attention to it, and, once she was dry, asked me to dry it too.  
  
I sat on my bed, gesturing for her to sit beside me, but she sat at the desk instead. Not once did she look at me. She didn't know that she didn't have to look at me for me to read her. I could feel her every emotion. I could see the pain in her eyes, and I knew that somewhere inside herself, she could feel my pain too.  
  
"We need to talk Max," she mumbled. I could almost hear Maria's words: the kiss of death.  
  
"I thought that you said everything that you wanted to when you came last night." I turned away from her then, not wanting the other images from last night to return. "I think that you proved your point."  
  
"How do you even know what my point was?" She stood from the chair. "You assume that you know every last thing about me just because you want to, but it's just not true. How do you know that last night had anything to do with you?"  
  
"So what," I asked, standing to be at her level, "you just sleep around when you get angry at someone? That's not you Liz."  
  
"Why do you think that you know me so well?" She spun around so that we were face to face. "I don't even know myself as well as you seem to."  
  
"I know that you wouldn't do that. I know that you wouldn't hurt anyone the way that you knew that that would hurt me."  
  
"You think that I wanted you to see us?" My heart clenched as she referred to herself and Kyle as "us." They weren't an "us" anymore. They hadn't been an "us" for a long time.  
  
"It doesn't matter whether you wanted me to see you or not. You knew that I would find out. It's been one day and half of our school knows already. I would have found out, and you knew that."  
  
"Well maybe that's what I wanted," she mumbled.  
  
"Why?" My voice dropped to follow hers, and a somber air filled the room. I didn't really want to know the answer anymore than she wanted to tell me, but now that it had been asked, there was no way out of it.  
  
"Maybe it was the only way that I could find to make you see the truth."  
  
"What truth?"  
  
She sighed and ran one hand through her long silky hair. "The truth in the fact that we aren't meant to be. I can't keep playing this game Max. I can't keep fighting you."  
  
"Why can't you see that I don't want my destiny? It doesn't mean anything to me."  
  
"Maybe that's what you need to change." She looked at me, and I could feel the grave air of finality fall around us. I could see the familiar glint of tears in her chocolate eyes, but I couldn't tell if they were her own or simply reflections of the ones that I could feel forming in my own eyes. "Your destiny shouldn't be something that you hate or fear. It's who you were. If you hate it, you hate a part of yourself."  
  
"Don't do this Liz," I pleaded, not knowing what else to say.  
  
"It's already been done," she whispered tearfully. She leaned forward and eliminated the space between us with one final tearful kiss. My heart split into about a million pieces as she began to pull away, but my hands found their way to her shoulders and pulled her to me once again, and all of our shared anguish, all the pain of the past months joined together in that final kiss. When she pulled away again all I could do was watch as she picked up her bag and walked to the window. Deep down, a part of me knew that I wouldn't see her again.  
  
When she had lifted the window she seemed to remember something and paused. She turned back and pulled a folded piece of paper from her pocket.  
  
"I don't want you to open this right away," she told me, again looking to the wall behind me. "Save it for when you really need me. Save it for when you can't find the truth in anyone." She looked up to meet my eyes one last time. "Will you do that for me?" I managed a small nod and she dropped it onto my bed and left me alone with the rain.  
  
I shook my head, trying to clear the memory. Years had passed. I had eventually opened the letter a few months later when the group began to fall apart. I still have it in a hollow book on one of my shelves. Every once in a while, when I really need the strength that I only seemed to find in Liz, I reread it.  
  
Right then, in the airport gift shop, I wished I had that letter with me. 


	4. Old Ghosts

~~~~~  
  
Part Three  
Maria POV  
~~~~~  
  
I wished that I could say that the fact that I was only hours away from  
seeing my long lost best friend was enough to raise my spirits to an all  
time high, but honestly, the thought of Liz brought back an inner turmoil  
that only years of denial and regret had put to rest. Yes, she was my best  
friend, and yes, I had loved her like my own sister, but I also saw what  
she did to everyone. She abandoned us without any kind of solid  
explanation, and I couldn't just forgive her for that.  
She only really said goodbye to Max (something that I had only learned  
after years of pestering about a letter that he used to keep in a box  
beside his bed that had handwriting that had looked strikingly familiar,  
and yet unknown until he finally told me about his last encounter with  
Liz). All she had given as offerings to Alex and me were letters that  
basically said she would miss us and she didn't want to go, but she had to.  
I read it so many times the first year after she left, I don't think I'll  
ever forget a word of it. Still, it was a shallow replacement for a real  
goodbye. It was a Dear John letter to people who thought they meant more  
to her than that. It was random answers to the questions we didn't really  
want answered that badly. It was a reminder of all that we hadn't gotten.  
  
Except for the letter that I believe she left on Kyle's doorstep, I think  
that that was the extent of her goodbye to Roswell. Four letters and tear  
filled break up. Well, I suppose it was better than nothing, but to a  
heartbroken seventeen year old who had lost her boyfriend and best friend  
in just a matter of nights, it wasn't nearly enough.  
  
I could almost feel that girl within me, slowly gaining strength as the  
ground slowly became hidden beneath the rain clouds of the northwest and  
Portland stopped feeling so very far away. She was going to be the one  
meeting with my old friend, and, though years had passed for me, she  
brought the pain and betrayal back so strongly it could have happened just  
yesterday.  
  
All I knew was that Liz was in for one hell of a day.  
~~~~~  
Max POV  
~~~~~  
I quickly realized that there was nothing that anyone I knew would really  
enjoy in the Roswell airport except for possible the little bit of wine  
that was arranged on the wall, so I grabbed a few bottles for the welcome  
home that I knew was coming that night and then, just as I was about to pay  
for the wine, I grabbed a set of wind chimes from a little counter beside  
the register. At least I would have something to offer Isabel. As for  
Michael-well my plan was to get him drunk enough that he didn't really  
think about the fact that I had practically insisted on escorting his  
girlfriend or that I was the only one that she had talked to between when  
we pulled into my driveway and her announcement about having to leave.  
It's not that I don't I know that Michael knows that Maria loves him and  
that I wouldn't ever do anything to come between them, but do I know that  
our friendship still bothers him sometimes.  
The whole drive back to the house was a fight to stay awake. Without Maria  
beside me constantly talking about something to fill the gaps of silence,  
sleep was a lot more demanding. Still, with the help of some hard rock  
radio stations that I hadn't listened to since the years when I had sped  
through the desert behind the driver's seat of the old rusted jeep that I  
had only come to part with about a year ago, I managed to pull into my  
driveway relatively straightly, without hitting Isabel's car, and stumble  
into the house. I left my gifts on the table beside our old brown couch  
which, if you asked me, had seen a few too many coffee spills. It was  
still holding the springs in though, and that was enough to dub it my bed  
for the next few hours.  
~~~~~  
Isabel POV  
~~~~~  
Michael and I were just waking up when we heard Max stumble into the house.  
After a look at the clock and then a baffled look in my direction, Michael  
gestured to the door and then fell back onto the pillow that he had tossed  
on my floor the night before. Apparently Maria had woken him at three  
buzzing about her trip, and, since my room was closer to the guest room-  
also known as Dad's old study-it was there that he stumbled into somewhere  
after three. He was lucky I saw his hair, still untamed, even after all  
the years. Otherwise the alien count might have fallen to two.  
  
I tossed my pillow at Michael when as he closed his eyes to return to  
sleep, but he simply shoved it under his head without so much as opening  
his eyes. I sighed, rolling my eyes at the heap on my floor and made my  
way into the hallway. The soft snores that emanated from my parents' room  
told me that they were still comfortably asleep, so I tiptoed down the  
stairs, careful to avoid the one that my teen years had taught me would  
give away any movement. Once I was at the bottom, I couldn't help but  
smile at the sight before me. Max lay sleeping on the couch, his mouth  
slightly open as he murmured incoherencies. I felt deeply sorry for anyone  
who had to share a pillow with my brother. I knew for a fact that his  
pillows were just about as dry as Michael's hair had been when he thought  
that spikes were in.  
  
When my eyes wandered to the table just beyond Max's feet I almost laughed.  
Presents from Roswell's airport. Well, it's the thought that counts,  
right? I wondered how much of it was green.  
  
A peek inside revealed three bottles of wine, one tipped and lying on the  
table, kept from rolling to the floor only by the weight of the other two  
and the thin plastic that it fought against. The last thing in the bag was  
a little white box. I began to reach for it, wanting to know what my  
brother had brought, but the annoying little voice in my head started  
blabbering about personal privacy. I was just in the process of shrugging  
it off and reaching for the box when my brother's sleepy ramblings became  
all too clear. It wasn't the sound of his voice that stopped me. No, had  
he simply mumbled something about apple pie, I would have known what was in  
that box long before he even knew that I had seen him sleeping down there.  
His mumblings were not that simple though, and while they may have caught  
me off guard at that moment, five, six years earlier, the words would have  
been so common, all I would have been able to do was look towards my  
brother's room and wonder when he would heal. I thought that he had. I  
thought that that piece of our lives had been put away.  
  
Apparently I was wrong, because I don't know many people who scream out for  
things they no longer long for. When Liz's name tore out into the darkness  
of our living room, silhouetted by the early morning lights, I finally took  
the time to do what I had neglected to do the first time around. I really  
looked at my brother. I wish that I could say that what I saw was  
comforting.  
~~~~~  
"And you're sure he called out for Liz?"  
  
"No Michael, he was screaming for Pez candies," I said, exasperated. "Of  
course it was Liz." I looked up at him. "Of course, if you would have  
gotten up with me then you would have heard it yourself."  
  
"Look Iz, don't yell at me, and don't blame me for not being down there."  
He ran his hand through his thick brown hair, making the front spike up  
just as it had all those years ago when discussions about Liz Parker were  
not quite so uncommon. "It's just... God, it's been years since he's done  
that Isabel. Why would the dreams come back after all these years, and why  
now when we have the first threat that we've had in years?"  
  
"I don't know Michael," I mumbled, bringing my tone down. My parents were  
still asleep down the hall, and they didn't need to know about this.  
"Wait." Michael looked up at me as I sat on my bed, desperately trying to  
remember any of the psychology class that I had taken in college. "I  
remember them talking about this in psych. Maybe it's because of the  
threat."  
  
"What?" Michael looked at me, not confused because of the sleep he had  
lost with my wake up call, but because he was utterly lost, and I knew it.  
  
"Well do you remember when Liz left?" It was a rhetorical question. Liz  
had left in the middle of everything. She had been one more tragedy in the  
whole mess that was out lives for those few months in our junior year. She  
had left during the big showdown without so much as a goodbye. The day we  
forgot about Liz Parker's exit was the day we all got Alzheimer's. Still,  
Michael nodded in the affirmative. "Well that was the last threat that we  
had. Maybe it's all coming back to him because we're back in the same  
position, possibly." Michael looked skeptical, but I couldn't think of  
anything else.  
  
"Well, come up with your own answer then."  
  
"I say we take Max's. We'll just ask him about it when he wakes up."  
"Michael," I said in a warning tone. "It's not like he's going to know why  
he's dreaming about what he's dreaming about."  
  
"He's going to know better than us."  
  
I rolled my eyes, knowing that Michael wasn't going to back down and not  
really wanting to fight this fight anyway. "Fine, talk to him, but  
Michael, use tact, please. Don't just blurt this out. You know as well as  
I do, Liz is still a sore subject for him."  
Michael just nodded and dropped himself back onto his sleeping bag. I  
looked at him incredulously. "You're going back to sleep?"  
  
"Yeah. Max got up near five this morning, he didn't get on last night  
until ten or so and then he spent an hour using his powers. I think that  
I'll have some time to catch some shut eye." I just rolled my eyes and  
walked out.  
~~~~~  
Maria POV  
~~~~~  
My plane landed in Portland's PDX airport at nine thirty that morning, and  
I spent a half hour wandering around through the little stores. It was  
probably twice the size of Roswell's airport, and had three different  
coffee shops, just in the section that I had to walk through to get out. I  
had found my home away from home.  
  
At around ten I decided that I probably shouldn't be completely caffeinated  
when I went to meet Liz. We were meeting at a coffee shop, after all, and  
she hadn't seen me in ten years. I didn't think that scaring her away with  
my sometimes frightening levels of energy would be the best way to start  
things off again, so I decided that I would wander around the city for a  
couple hours. According to the on flight magazines, Portland was a  
beautiful city.  
After another half an hour spent getting a rental car and the fifteen  
minutes finding out where Liz's coffee shop was, I was off, wandering  
aimlessly down the streets of the foreign town.  
The man in the Hertz office had told me that the coffee shop was somewhere  
in downtown, and so I decided that, rather than getting lost trying to find  
my way to our meeting place from anywhere that wasn't the Hertz office, I  
should just go and hang out downtown for a while. Shopping malls and food  
courts. Obviously I was crushed.  
  
After making sure that I could find the coffee shop by driving past it once-  
well, make that twice. I may have gotten a little confused in the one way  
traffic-I found the nearest 99 cent parking garage and started my  
excavations. Oregonians beware. Maria Deluca's in town and she has a  
credit card.  
~~~~~  
Shopping was a bust. For once in my life, I couldn't lose myself in the  
racks of clothing and mobs of people. I just couldn't stop thinking.  
(Somewhere, I know that all of my teachers just felt the need to laugh and  
they don't know why.) Finally, I gave up on that and just went to the  
coffee shop where I was supposed to meet Liz, ordered a coffee, and sat in  
the corner farthest from the door. Liz was expecting Max, and, as much as  
I had wanted to blow them off, Max's words had made me question the  
friendship that I had just assumed Liz and I had somehow held on to even  
after all of our years apart. It was a fantasy that I had held onto for  
far too long, and now that reality had come along and slapped me once  
again, I realized that I didn't want Liz to run away from me, even if she  
didn't want me to see her. 


	5. Run Away

~~~~~  
Part Four  
Liz POV  
~~~~~  
I ended up getting to the coffee shop nearly a half an hour early, so it  
didn't surprise me when Max's familiar face didn't greet me. I planned to  
stay in the shop for as long as possible. Part of me knew that Jerry  
wouldn't be like he was the night before. Part of me knew that, just like  
always, he would come home after one of the bad nights and he would be the  
amazing man that I had fallen in love with years before. Part of me knew  
that tonight was safe.  
  
The other part of me screamed that every night with Max had been safe.  
  
I sat on one of the two couches placed towards the front, close enough to  
see the street outside, but far enough back that I could turn away if  
someone that I didn't want to talk to walked by. After all, it was the  
lunch hour and I knew a lot of people that worked downtown. I wasn't  
prepared to turn around from the person who did find me though.  
  
~~~~~  
Maria POV  
~~~~~  
I watched her walk in, order, and sit at a couch by the door. She was  
making sure that she could run if she wanted to. Well, I suppose I cut  
that plan off.  
  
I waited a few minutes, knowing that I was early enough to just sit and sip  
my coffee for a while, but I didn't want her to turn around, see me, and  
decide to take off. I wasn't sure if the reason that I wanted to talk to  
her was because I wanted to tell her off, or because I wanted to drag her  
back to Roswell with me so that we could pretend none of it had happened,  
but I knew that I had to talk to her. If anything, I had to tell her what  
she'd done to us. It was something that I knew Max would never be able to  
say to her, and it was something that she needed to know. It might not be  
what she wanted to hear, but it had gone unsaid for too long.  
  
Finally I pushed myself out of the booth and forced myself to walk over to  
the little couch that Liz had seated herself on, making sure that I was  
directly in front of it before I stopped walking. Liz looked up at me as  
soon and for a moment all we could do was stare at each other. She didn't  
look like my old friend anymore. Her hair was shorter, more business like,  
and she just seemed. older, but I supposed she would say the same thing  
about me. It really had been a long time since we had seen each other.  
  
"Maria?" she gasped, obviously surprised at my presence. "What are you-is  
everyone here?" she said, turning to look for the rest of "the group."  
  
"No," I said. "They're back home-back in Roswell." She looked back at me  
slowly, beginning to realize that this wasn't going to be the carefree  
reunion that she had hoped for.  
  
"Well it's good to see you," she said. "It's been a while."  
  
"So are you just going to pretend it didn't happen?" I asked my voice calm  
and even.  
  
"Sit down Maria," she said, moving to give me room.  
  
"Maybe I don't want to sit with you," I said defiantly.  
  
"Can we talk like adults?" she said. "You're beginning to draw a crowd."  
I looked around and faces instantly flashed back to the coffee cups in  
front of them.  
  
"Fine," I said, taking a seat beside her. "I want an  
explanation." I turned on the couch so that we faced each other. "I want  
to know why you left."  
  
"Can't we just put it behind us, Maria?" she asked. "Years have passed.  
Why do we have to worry about the past?"  
  
"You ran away from it all, Liz," I said, anger edging into my voice. "You  
weren't there. You wouldn't ask me questions like that if you had been.  
You don't know what you did to us."  
  
"I did it for you," she said, her anger coming to match mine. "Everything  
I did was for all of you."  
  
"Really?" I asked her, my voice dripping with sarcasm. "You almost got all  
of us killed. Did you do that for us too?"  
  
"What?" She looked at me, trying to gauge what level of exaggeration was  
used in my last statement.  
  
"Yeah," I say, shaking my head lightly. "When you left the fighting  
started, both inside of our group and outside. Kyle nearly killed Max  
himself when he found out that you had taken off. After that, nothing was  
the same between the two of them. Eventually they found some even ground  
where they could at least be in a room together, but Kyle hasn't spoken to  
Max since. well at least not since Tess left."  
  
"Tess left?" Liz breathed, pure shock evident in her voice.  
  
"A few weeks after the fighting ended she took off. We haven't seen her in  
years." I knew that I must've sounded bitter, but a part of me really  
believed that Liz deserved it. She'd forced that supposed destiny on all  
of us almost as much as Tess had, and I wanted her to know that it had  
never been meant to happen. I wanted her to know that it had all been for  
nothing, because it was the only thing that I knew would make her feel some  
of what she had put us through.  
  
"Why didn't you go after her?" she asked.  
  
"She didn't want to be one of us. We didn't come after you either, and we  
wanted you back a hell of a lot more. She wanted out. We weren't going to  
hold her captive just because of what she was. She wanted a life, and she  
knew just as well as we did that she couldn't ever be anyone but Ava, the.  
Czeckloslovakian queen, if she stayed in Roswell. She finally wanted to  
be. human."  
  
Liz looked at the floor and I wasn't sure if it was doubt or fear in her  
eyes as she looked away. "I answered your question," I said after a  
moment. "You need to answer mine."  
  
"I left because I didn't want to be in Roswell anymore," she told me.  
  
"That's bull and you know it," I said, staring her down. "You left without  
telling a soul. Even your parents didn't know where you were. If you had  
just wanted out of Roswell, all you had to do was tell them. You know that  
they would have let you go live with family somewhere. It was bigger than  
that. You didn't want us to be able to find you."  
  
"Please, Maria," she said with a sigh. "I think you've been living in this  
whole conspiracy life a little too long."  
  
"You're lying Liz. You never lied to me." I looked at her while she  
trained her eyes on the floor. "What happened to you?"  
  
"I grew up," she said, her voice suddenly strong again as her eyes raised  
to meet mine. "I couldn't keep playing the little games. I couldn't keep  
lying to everyone. I couldn't be a part of that life anymore. I'm normal  
here Maria; do you understand that? I'm normal again. No one knows about  
the shooting. No one associates me with some conspiracy. My friends  
aren't only my friends because of a secret that I know about them. I'm  
free here."  
  
My answer comes without pause. "That's bull too. You know that they  
weren't just your friends because of what you knew about them."  
  
"Oh please, like they would have even talked to us if Max hadn't told me  
the truth."  
  
"It started like that, but that wasn't what kept us together. The fact  
that we care about each other has kept us together. Obviously you didn't  
care that much though."  
  
"That's not fair," she said, her voice growing louder. "Besides, Kyle and  
Tess left too; why don't you go and give them this speech?"  
  
"They were never really a part of any of this," I said, trying my best to  
keep my voice even so that we wouldn't gain an even larger audience. "You  
are the reason that this all started. You are the reason that we all  
became the friends that we are. You and Max were the center of all of  
this. I mean, did you even think of him when you left? Do you know what  
it did to him when you took off?"  
  
"I did it for him," she said, raising her voice again. "It was for his own  
good."  
  
"Oh," I said sarcastically, "so years of sleepless nights and heartbreak  
were for his own good? I don't think that he saw it that way. You almost  
got us all killed because of what you did. Max stopped caring when you  
left. He didn't care about doing what he had to do. He didn't care about  
saving himself, and therefore the rest of us, when his enemies came. He  
didn't want to keep going without you, and it was a really bad time for him  
to stop caring about his own welfare."  
  
"You can't blame me for that," she said stubbornly. "He's obviously over  
me now, and it's better this way. Us together was. it was never meant to  
be."  
  
"You think he's over you?" I asked her. "Please! I know that you didn't  
fake what you felt for him, unless our whole friendship was a lie, and have  
you ever gotten over him?"  
  
"Yes," she said strongly, surprising me. "Yes, I have. I'm married now  
Maria." She dropped her left hand on the couch in between us to show me  
the beautiful diamond ring. "I'm not the girl that you knew anymore."  
  
"Obviously not," I said, still staring at the ring.  
  
"Look, Maria, can we please just. can we just catch up like-"  
  
"Like normal people?" I finished. She nodded softly. "Well I'm sorry.  
I'm not normal, and I haven't been for a long time. My best friend would  
have known that though. I guess you have changed." I looked at her,  
pausing for a moment. "I have to go."  
  
"Maria wait," she said, grabbing my wrist as I stood. "Don't leave like  
this. Let's just catch up."  
  
"I can't. I promised Alex that I'd call him and tell him how Christmas  
went."  
  
"Then meet me tomorrow."  
  
I looked at her as she pleaded with me and I really saw that she had  
changed. The Liz I knew was not the begging type, and a part of me wanted  
to know what had changed my friend. "When and where?"  
  
"There's a little restaurant in Clackamas called Gustav's. Five o'clock is  
happy hour. We can have dinner." I nodded and left the girl in my best  
friend's body to her coffee.  
~~~~~  
Michael POV  
~~~~~  
"So," I said, dropping onto the couch beside Max. I had been rudely re-  
awakened by Isabel as she beat me with her pillow and told me to "get my  
lazy ass off of her floor and go talk to her brother," so, ten minutes and  
one explosion of down feathers later, there I was. talking to Max. "How  
was Portland?"  
  
"Great," Max said. "It was great seeing the relatives."  
  
"Oh," I said, not hiding my boredom well. "Sounds like fun." There was a  
good lesson in this whole conversation. Tact was a hard thing to use.  
  
"Michael, what do want? I know you didn't come to talk to me about my  
trip."  
  
"Hey, I am very interested in what is going on in your life!" I said  
defensively.  
  
"Michael, you and I both know that you don't give a damn about Portland, so  
why don't you get to why you came over here?"  
  
"Fine," I said, not noticing as Isabel walked down from her room. "Isabel  
heard you call out Liz's name while you were sleeping and we wanted to know  
why."  
  
"Michael!" Isabel said, suddenly behind me as she smacked me upside the  
head.  
  
"You heard me say Liz's name?" Max asked Isabel, paying no attention to my  
newly wounded skull. "When?"  
  
"Today," Isabel said, glaring at me. "I came down when I heard you get  
back from the airport, and I was looking through the airport bag, and I  
heard you say her name."  
  
"You were looking through the airport bag?" Max asked. "Why were you  
looking through the bag?"  
  
"Don't try to change the subject with such an idiotic question," I said.  
"I think we both know why Isabel was in the bag." She hit me upside the  
head again. "Well we do," I told her. Glaring, she decided to ignore me.  
  
"Max, why did you say her name?" Isabel said, trying to redirect the  
conversation.  
  
"I don't know," he said. "Maybe I was dreaming about her."  
  
"Why would you dream about Liz?"  
  
"I don't know. Not all of us have as much control over our dreams as you  
do, Isabel."  
  
"You have to have some idea."  
  
"I don't." Max reached out to the coffee table and grabbed the television  
remote. Without turning back to us he switched the TV off and stood up.  
"Now, if you think you can survive without me for a few hours, I have some  
things to do." He walked out without another word and left Isabel glaring  
at me again.  
  
"Nice tact, Michael." 


	6. Promises

Quick A/N: First of all, thank you all SO much for all of the AMAZING  
feedback. It's great. Second, this part is pretty long (10-ish pages) to  
make up for the time that the next part is going to take me. It definitely  
won't be out before Christmas, probably later. I only get out of school...  
sheesh, on the 19th, and my sister's birthday is the 22nd. I may be able  
to get something done on Christmas if I remember to bring a disk to my  
uncle's house. (He's a computer freak, and it would get me away from my  
family, but there's also a good chance someone would try to read it, so...  
I don't know yet. Pros and Cons. I'll decide soon.) Anyway, hope you like  
the part, and I'll try to make the next part long too, but... well, here's  
to hoping. So R&R and I love you guys for all the great feedback. Okay,  
I'm shutting up now.  
  
Tina  
  
~~~~~  
Part Five  
Max POV  
~~~~~  
I climbed into my car after the incident with Michael and Isabel, not  
really caring that my father was out back barbequing for my welcome home  
party, or that my mother was in the kitchen making everything that was not  
barbeque-able. I just wanted to get out. Liz was turning my life upside  
down once again, but this time she wasn't there to help me set it straight  
again.  
  
I didn't really know where I was going until the still bright neon lights  
came into view. It was amazing to me how popular the restaurant still was.  
All of the teenagers spent hours after school there, and a whole new set  
of high school girls had taken over Liz and Maria's retired uniforms.  
Sometimes I liked to go in, just to let myself pretend that I was just  
another one of the high schoolers. So much of my time was spent pretending  
that I was sixteen again. It was ironic. When I was sixteen, I wished I  
was anyone else. Now I realize that that was probably the happiest I've  
ever been in my life. My biggest secret had been shared with total  
strangers, the FBI was chasing me, and I was placed in a spotlight that I  
had spent my life avoiding, but I was happy. She was with me.  
  
"Hi Max," Mrs. Parker said as I found myself at the counter. She was  
sitting behind it, working the register. I had managed to come on the one  
night that she had to come down and work through each night because they  
were still short one hand. one hand that I had just found. "I thought you  
were in Portland."  
  
"I came back early," I told her. "I wanted to see my family again before  
school started."  
  
"So what are you doing here?"  
  
"Actually, I wanted to talk to you and Jeff." In the years since Liz had  
left, I had actually gotten to know her parents pretty better than in all  
the years that I nearly lived in their diner. I was constantly in the  
restaurant after Liz left, as usual, trying to force myself to forget. I  
would sit in Maria's section and just pretend that Liz was on break, or  
that she was upstairs getting ready to come down. After the first few  
months and the countless Will Smith burgers and Men in Black Berry Pie, it  
got pretty hard for them to not notice me.  
  
"Just go on in back then, Max. I'll get one of the girls to watch the  
register." She smiled at me and I walked back through the all too familiar  
employee doors. It was like a portal to a different time behind those  
doors. The same old, tattered, 70's style couch sat against the back wall  
next to the same faded wooden door that I dropped Liz off at after every-  
planned-date we had. The same pale orange lockers sat against the opposite  
wall, covered in stickers for bands and concerts that were generations old.  
The same brown tile even covered the floor, fading into carpet as it hit  
the stairs that led to a world that I had once been innately involved in.  
  
Nancy came in then, letting the door swing softly behind her. She brushed  
a strand of graying red hair behind her ear. "Even behind the counter,  
that job takes something out of you." I smiled at her. "I'll go and get  
Jeff." With a smile she walked up the old staircase, trying to hold the  
arthritis that was slowly claiming her aging joints. She aged faster than  
she should have, and it was starting to show.  
  
I sat myself on the tattered old couch, unsure of why I had come. I  
couldn't tell them where Liz was. Part of me knew that she would come back  
when she was ready. Part of me knew that if she didn't, Maria would bring  
her kicking and screaming. Really though, that wasn't why I wanted to keep  
Liz's location to myself. Part of me knew that she had run from us, that  
she didn't want us back. Part of me still blamed myself for her leaving.  
Part of me didn't want to give her another reason to run.  
  
Another part of me wanted to throw her over my shoulder and carry her back  
myself. That was the part male chauvinistic part that Maria had been  
trying to tame with our friendship. Had she known, she probably would have  
wished she wouldn't have worked so hard on that.  
  
"Hi Max," Jeff said, appearing on the stairs with Nancy close behind him.  
  
"Hi Mr. Parker," I answered, uncomfortable calling him by his first name,  
even after the many times he had insisted I should. No matter how long I  
knew him for, he would always be Liz's father, and my mother would be proud  
to know that I had learned that that meant that he deserved respect. I  
shifted myself further towards the arm of the chair as the couple sat  
beside me.  
  
Jeff smiled. "How many times do I have to tell you to call me Jeff?" His  
tone was light, but there was a burden that always pulled on him,  
especially when he saw me. That was what I hated about the friendship I  
had established with them. I knew that every time they saw me they thought  
of Liz, and I knew that it kept them at least one step further from ever  
moving on. Again, I wondered what I was going to say to them. "What did  
you want to talk to us about?"  
  
"Well," I said, suddenly uncomfortable. I wasn't going to taunt them with  
the information that I had. I just wanted them to know that she was safe.  
I wanted them to be able to move on, to stop wondering. "It's actually  
about Liz."  
  
The looked up, instantly enthralled by whatever I had to say. I had to  
feel bad for them. When Liz left, they had been broken. They had everyone  
looking for her-the police, friends, family-but slowly the searching  
dulled, and people began to give up. The police took her off the runaway  
list when she turned 18, simply sending her parents a note that said that  
since she was legal they wouldn't spend any more money looking for her. in  
much kinder words of course. That was really where it all ended for them.  
That was when they broke, and they gave up on finding her. That was when  
they really admitted that she was gone.  
  
"What about Liz?" Nancy asked, hope shining in her eyes.  
  
I sighed and ran my hand through my hair. "I want you to know that she's  
okay."  
  
"How do you know that?" Jeff asked.  
  
"I can't tell you." The hope dissolved from their eyes as they begun to  
realize, not that I knew where she was and wouldn't tell them, but that my  
words were simply wishful thinking.  
  
"That's a nice thought, Max," Jeff said, moving his arms to help him stand.  
  
"I talked to her," I said softly. Instantly, he was back in his seat. "I  
can't tell you where she is though."  
  
"Max-" Nancy said, her voice both pleading and demanding in a motherly tone  
that I hadn't heard from her in a long time.  
  
"I can't tell you," I said, hating that I had even come. I was only  
hurting them more, making them remember things that they didn't want to,  
and they didn't deserve to be haunted by these old ghosts.  
  
"She's our daughter."  
  
"I'll tell her anything you want me to," I promised them, needing to give  
them something. "I just can't tell you where she is."  
  
They looked at each other, hating that the knowledge was so close, and yet  
they were still so far in the dark. It was a brighter light then they had  
seen in years though, so they ran for it as if the devil were on their  
backs. Instantly words came flowing from their mouths--beautiful messages  
that I was to relay to Liz. I tried my best to remember it all, hoping  
that I had given them more comfort than grief, and I left them, promising  
that Liz would hear it all. They nodded, and I only hoped that my face  
wouldn't be on a wanted page in The Crashdown the next day.  
~~~~~  
Liz POV  
~~~~~  
"Where have you been?" His voice is soft, calm. I let out a breath I  
hadn't known I had been holding.  
  
"I had coffee with a friend," I say, not wanting to talk about my meeting  
with Maria. No matter how much I loved her, and no matter how much I loved  
hearing about everyone, the conversation had not gone how I had wanted-how  
I had planned. Maria had not been willing to play along. She had a reason  
to look to the future now; she was ready to put the past behind her. I  
clung to it as if it could change what I had done-as if it could fix all my  
mistakes.  
  
I glanced around my living room. The wood of the old table was faded, the  
shine of the finish lost long before it fell into our hands. The couch-a  
small loveseat in pale white-had soft scratches from the cat who had been  
my only companion during the first grueling years away from home. The cat-  
Zan, though no one understood the name-had died less than a year after  
Jerry and I had moved in together. He didn't understand why it took so  
long for me to grieve for a cat that I had found in the alley behind my  
first apartment, but he had comforted me none the less. He had become my  
knight then. If only I had known how quickly his armor would rust.  
  
As for Jerry, he sat in the middle of the loveseat, taking up enough room  
for at least two people. He had cleaned up, taming his helplessly curly  
hair as best as he could. It still looked damp from a recent shower, the  
water turning his normally dark blonde hair to an almost chestnut hue. His  
clothes were faded from use, but clean and, mostly, in one piece. His  
faded blue jeans were only slightly worn with grey threads wearing thin  
over his muscular knees. His tee shirt was something that I had found and  
given to him, and in deep, bold, black letters over his chest, it  
proclaimed the superiority of Ford over Chevy.  
  
"I ordered dinner," he told me, standing up as I walked into the room,  
dropping my purse onto a table by the door and shedding my rain slicked  
jacket before hanging it on a hook on the wall behind the door. I smiled  
slightly in response to Jerry, not wanting to bring money into the  
conversation. I had to get through the night without a bruise. Maria had  
missed them once, and she might again if all I had were the fading remains  
of a night that, like so many others, I hoped to soon forget. New bruises  
might draw attention, attention might draw questions, and questions were  
something that I simply couldn't deal with.  
  
Sighing quietly, I leaned into Jerry as his arm fell over my shoulder,  
wishing that I really could find the comfort his touch had once offered.  
Letting my eyes slip closed, I found myself remembering for the first time  
in a very long time.  
~~~~~  
//My back ached as I approached the modest apartment that I shared with my  
two favorite male companions. I fished in my purse as I climbed the last  
of the lamp-lit stairs, cursing myself for not throwing them into the  
zippered pocket that I always told myself was made for keys. When I  
approached the door, though, it swung open on its own. Standing in a halo  
of light, Jerry looked like an angel-my angel, I thought, accepting the  
kiss he offered eagerly. Perhaps it was a bit much-he had only saved me  
from a few more moments in the torrent of water that seemed so familiar to  
these people-but I loved him just a bit more for it, none the less.  
  
"How was your day?" I asked, throwing my things down in the haphazard way I  
had come to enjoy. I threw myself down onto the couch, narrowly missing my  
second roommate who howled at my nerve. "Oh, Zan," I cried, grabbing the  
sleek black tabby around the stomach and pulling him into my lap. "I'm  
sorry baby. I didn't see you there." I looked up to Jerry, who stood at  
least three feet from the couch. "I can't believe you're afraid of him," I  
said, scratching Zan behind the ears until he purred, rolling his head so  
my hand moved to where he wanted it. "He's a sweetheart."  
  
"Only to you, Lizzie," he said, using the pet name that I had come to  
prefer. Something about the innocence of it drew me in, making me wish  
that just using the name could return the innocence that I had lost. "That  
cat hates the rest of the world."  
  
"That's because he's my baby," I cooed, smiling as Zan stretched out and  
circled on my stomach, finally pawing my shirt around until he was happy  
enough to curl up to sleep. "Let me guess. You've been avoiding the couch  
since you got home, because Zan was sitting here, haven't you?" Jerry  
rolled his eyes and walked over to the ottoman in the corner, careful to  
stay as far from the couch as possible.  
  
"Laugh all you want. You'd be terrified of him too, if you were in my  
shoes."  
  
"Wuss," I teased lightly.  
  
"Excuse me?" he asked, his eyebrows rising in mock anger. "What did you  
call me?"  
  
"I called you a wuss," I repeated. I gestured to Zan. "What are you going  
to do about it?"  
  
He smiled flirtatiously, nearly jumping from the seat to capture my lips  
in a searing kiss, then pulling away just as quickly as he had come. Zan  
hissed menacingly, and I petted him slowly, trying to soothe him. Jerry  
headed for the door.  
  
"Where are you going?" I asked, pouting slightly.  
  
"I'm just going for dinner," he told me. "You have fun with the cat." He  
pulled the door open, letting the heat from our apartment soak out into the  
rainy night. "Then we can have some fun," he added meaningfully, slipping  
our from behind the door.//  
~~~~  
Maria POV  
~~~~~  
My hand lay limply on the battered, old motel telephone, a question playing  
on repeat in my head. To call Alex, or not to call Alex? Apparently that  
was the real question.  
  
For what seemed like the hundredth time that night, I grabbed the phone in  
a rush of energy, dialed half of the number, and slammed the phone back  
into the base. Rolling my eyes, I laid back onto the bed, trying to force  
myself into some kind of decision. Before I made up my mind though, the  
phone rang.  
  
"Max?" I asked, putting the phone to my ear. He was the only one who had  
the number.  
  
"You know, if I were a less secure man, or I didn't have a sneaking  
suspicion that Max was in love with someone else, I would be highly jealous  
after a greeting like that."  
  
"If?" I said, smiling. "Michael, how did you get this number?" I paused,  
his words setting in. An allusion to Liz? Now? Why? "What did you say  
about Max?" I asked.  
  
"Well, with all the time you two have been spending together, a guy could  
get jealous."  
  
"Not that," I said. "The other thing."  
  
"Oh," he said, deflated. Had I not just ended one of the worst days I'd  
had in a long time, I would have felt bad for not at least giving him some  
reassurance about my feelings. No matter how long we were together, I knew  
he was still just as insecure as the day he had first told me he loved me-  
and then left me. "Just-Isabel heard Max call out Liz's name. She's-we're  
worried about him."  
  
"You shouldn't worry," I said, nervously biting my lip. It was a horrible  
habit that I just couldn't seem to break. "I'm sure that it's nothing."  
  
"Yeah," Michael said, unconvinced. "It's just, when I told him about it,  
he kind of took off." I sat straight up in bed.  
  
"Where did he go?"  
  
"We don't know," Michael said, sounding more hopeless than he had in years.  
"He stormed out, and we haven't seen him since."  
  
I tried to reason with myself, telling myself that Max would be fine, but  
after what had happened with his father, I didn't like it. Still, I wanted  
to make Michael feel better. "I'm sure he's fine," I said lamely. "He  
probably just wanted to sort things out for himself."  
  
"Yeah," Michael said softly. He paused. "When are you coming home?"  
  
Then I paused. "I'm not sure. Things aren't going very well down here. I  
may catch a flight back tomorrow, depending on how things go."  
  
"I miss you," he said softly, making me smile. It had taken me years, but  
I had finally broken in. He'd finally admitted that there was a heart  
behind his armor.  
  
"I miss you too." There was some shuffling on the other end of the line,  
and I thought I heard a door slam. "What was that?"  
  
There was silence, but I could hear someone-Isabel, I thought-talking in  
the background.  
  
"Max is back," Michael said finally. "Do you want to talk to him?" I  
thought about it. He would ask me about the meeting with Liz. She had  
gotten married. Married. How was I supposed to tell him that?  
  
"Actually, my dinner just got here," I lied. "I'll call back later, okay?"  
We said our goodbyes and I hung the phone up, exhaling slowly. If Liz  
expected me to tell Max what she had told me, I would never forgive her.  
If she made me break one of my last friends, I could promise that my words  
of her would not be fond, and somehow, someway, I would make her pay for  
hurting him. She may have been my best friend once, but Max was my friend  
now. There were no ibests/i in my life anymore, and Liz Parker was no  
longer on the list.  
~~~~~  
Michael POV  
~~~~~  
I hung the phone up slowly, the male chauvinistic half of me that Maria had  
been trying so hard to suppress very glad that she had been too busy to  
speak to Max, and my intuitive half (the half that she had slowly  
cultivated over the years) wondering why she had become so busy when Max  
had gotten back. I pushed the thoughts away and turned my attention to  
Max.  
  
"Where were you?" Isabel asked, her eyes checking for anything misplaced in  
Max's appearance. "You scared the hell out of us."  
  
"I had something I had to do," Max answered.  
  
"Max, look," Isabel said, using the years she had known me to deduce that I  
wasn't going to be any help. "We weren't trying to butt in."  
  
"I know, Isabel," Max said calmly.  
  
"We just worry about you," she said. "Especially now." Max's eyes  
narrowed as he remembered what had happened the night before, and I  
couldn't help wondering what had gotten him so off-balance. Max Evans was  
always in control of everything around him. He was a leader in every sense  
of the word. except when Liz Parker wove her magic around his life.  
  
None of it made sense. Everything pointed to Liz, someone we hadn't even  
heard from in years-someone who had up and left us when things got tough.  
If she hadn't proven her loyalties long before, I would have thought she  
had led the enemy to us. They seemed to follow her name. Still, though, I  
knew she couldn't be blamed for that-not entirely at least. What she did  
had corrupted us from the inside, and even though Max always trusted her  
without a doubt, it had taken me a long time to make myself believe she had  
just happened to run as everything came crashing down. Now I didn't know  
what to think.  
~~~~~  
Liz POV  
~~~~~  
Maria was waiting at the bar, a strawberry margarita on the bar in front of  
her, when I walked into Gustav's. Her hair, still shoulder length, but  
longer than I remembered, was held back by a thin headband. She was  
wearing a faded pair of blue jeans and one of the tank tops that her mother  
used to sell. A suede jacket sat on the stool beside her.  
  
I walked up beside her, catching the bartender's eyes before hers. "Can I  
have a virgin margarita please?" I asked, waiting for Maria to move her  
jacket to the other side before taking the stool. The bartender nodded and  
went to work.  
  
"I'm glad you showed up," I told her, still watching the bartender.  
  
"Yeah," she answered tightly. "Well, there are still a few things that we  
have to talk about." The sound of her voice alone reminded me of the  
distance between us now-the distance I had put between us. There was no  
leisure in her voice. It was all professional. She didn't want to be here  
to catch up with me. She was only looking out for herself now, and the  
others, and honestly, I couldn't blame her. I hated what I had done to  
them, but I couldn't take it back, no matter how much I wanted to, and if I  
had saved them all by doing it, I wouldn't change a thing, because no  
matter how much Maria wanted to believe I had changed, I cared for all of  
them, and I'd probably still give my life for them. Time changed a lot  
though, and the answer was a bit fuzzier than it had once been.  
  
"Look," I said, spinning the bar stool slightly to the side, "I'm sorry  
about yesterday."  
  
"Forget about it," Maria cut me off. "Things changed. I'm sorry I pushed  
it."  
  
"Still, it shouldn't have come out like that," Liz said. "I wanted you to  
know, but not like that."  
  
Maria sighed, taking down a little piece of the wall she had put up. She  
and Michael were more alike than either of them would care to admit. I'd  
never been on this side of her wall before though. "It was never going to  
be easy," she told me. "There's no easy way to bring that into  
conversation." My margarita came and I took a drink, trying to occupy my  
mouth as an explanation for the silence.  
  
"So," I said finally, "how is everyone? How's Alex?" Alex was safe. Alex  
was always common ground.  
  
"He's good. He's married too," she said, and my eyes narrowed. "He nearly  
gave Isabel a heart attack when he proposed." Maria smiled at the memory  
and I couldn't help the pang I felt at not knowing it myself. "I don't  
think I've ever seen Isabel flustered. It was like she fell off her  
throne."  
  
"You were there?" I had to ask.  
  
"We all were. He proposed at the Congratulations party for Max getting  
into medical school." She smiled proudly, as if his acceptance was her  
own, and I couldn't help envying her. "He had the ring baked into her  
piece of cake. He worked it out with the Evans, and he made sure that they  
knew what piece was Isabel's and when to give it to her, because he wanted  
their song to be playing on the stereo." She paused, remembering, and all  
I could see was the face of the shy sixteen-year-old who could barely work  
up the nerve to say hello to Isabel. "It was beautiful. Every girl there  
cried, and then Max made a big scene about stealing his party, but he was  
smiling too."  
  
"I wish I could have been there," I said, but even as the words came out of  
my mouth, I knew they were a mistake.  
  
"You could have been there," she said, her voice softer, not tinted with  
the anger from the day before.  
  
"Maria, you don't understand."  
  
"Make me understand, Liz," she pleaded, "because I've been trying. I've  
been trying to explain to myself for years, why I couldn't know." Her  
voice was high, near breaking, and I was about to cave too.  
  
"Let's sit somewhere," I said, walking to a little booth built into the  
wall with my margarita in hand. Maria followed behind me, her coat draped  
over her hand.  
  
"Are you really going to explain, Liz?" she asked. "Because I don't want  
to hear more excuses. If you can't at least explain to me why my best  
friend couldn't even tell me why she had to just up and leave town, then  
I'm going to leave right now. If you can't tell me that, then I won't make  
any more time for this little game you're making up her. There are people  
who need me back home."  
  
I nodded softly, wondering when I had lost the fire that Maria had tendered  
so well. "It's not something I can tell just you," I said. My hand was  
wrapped around her arm before she had even fully stood from the table. "I  
have to tell everyone, and it's not something they can hear from you, or  
over a phone."  
  
Her eyes clouded in disbelief. "What are you saying Liz?"  
  
I sighed. "I guess I'm saying I'm going back to Roswell." 


	7. Reunion

Author's Note: Okay, yes, this extremely late. (Insert excuse here). I  
really don't have one, and, honestly, I don't love this chapter, but it  
needed to be done so that I could get past it. I kept getting caught up on  
the Maria/Liz scenes, and... Anyway, here it is. It will most likely be  
revised at least once more... unless I get really lazy. I basically just  
took about four hours to write this though, and I really want to get it  
posted, because I hate how long it's taking me. The next part, hopefully,  
will come faster. Anyway, basically, sorry for the delay. Enjoy the part.  
Tell me what you think. Oh and thanks bunches for all of the great  
replies! (Katydidit, I thought the monster thing was hilarious!) Okay,  
I'm shutting up now!  
~~~~~  
Part Six  
Maria POV  
~~~~~  
"So what's his name?" I asked, lifting a small picture of Liz and the man I  
can only assume is her husband. He's more rugged than I would have though,  
with wild blonde curls and strong, masculine arms. Mentally, I was  
comparing him to Max. Through my eyes, they seemed to be polar opposites.  
Where this man looked wild and untamable, Max was honest and trustworthy.  
I chastised myself for my rash judgment and set the picture back in its  
place.  
  
"Jerry," Liz answered. A small suitcase laid open on her bed as she tossed  
whatever touched her hand into it.  
  
"So, did you two meet in college?" I asked, trying to keep her from going  
silent on me as she had so many times through the rest of out uncomfortable  
dinner. She didn't want to go back. I knew that, but. I couldn't just let  
her drop out of our lives again.  
  
"Yeah," she replied, zipping her suitcase. "He proposed at graduation."  
She was already leaving the room as she said it, so I quickly followed.  
  
"Shouldn't you wait to tell him you're leaving?" I asked as she began  
scribbling small text onto a piece of paper.  
  
"I'd rather leave him a note. I just want to be gone before I can back  
out." I shut my mouth, not wanting to push her out of the trip. "Okay,"  
she said after another second. "Let's go." As the words left her mouth,  
headlights beamed in through the window.  
  
"I guess I will get to meet the man in your life." I smiled, turning to  
Liz. An unreadable look crossed her face, but passed in a moment.  
  
"Maria, I'm really sorry," she said, already pushing me towards the door,  
"but I don't want to take the time to do introductions right now." It was  
much more demanding than Liz had been since I had come to Portland, so I  
complied and headed for the door. "Just start up the car. I'll be out in  
a second."  
  
As I flung open the door, I came face to face with the man from the  
picture, though he looked even wilder now. His hair was more than tousled  
and his curls were flattened and jutting in every direction. His eyes were  
slightly glazed as he looked at me, and took a moment to focus. Looking at  
him, I wanted to pull Liz away with me right then, but I simply nodded at  
him, pushing every intuition I had aside, and stepped beside him. Moments  
after I was tucked back into my rental car, the door slammed behind me,  
closing me out of another part of Liz's world. Something told me I should  
have broken the door down then, but I had already pushed my intuitions  
aside.  
~~~  
Liz POV  
~~~  
I knew he was drunk. It was something in his eyes. They looked like glass  
when he had been drinking.  
  
"Who was that?" he asked, his voice deep and rugged. There was an  
accusation in his tone, but I'm not even sure he knew what it was for.  
  
"She's from work," I lied, knowing all I had to do was get out of the  
house. "There's an emergency, and I have to go out of town for a couple of  
days, okay babe?" I asked, trying to fight the urge to shrink into the  
wall.  
  
"You don't leave," he said, his voice momentarily crystal clear.  
  
"I left you some money for take out in the dresser upstairs. If you need  
anything else, use the credit card." I hated myself for saying it, because  
I knew we couldn't afford it, but I needed to get out. God only knew how  
long Maria would wait for me.  
  
He had stepped away from the door so I got my hand on the handle and  
twisted it. "Love you, honey," I said, rushing to the car. Part of me  
prayed that he was sober enough to remember Maria and know better than to  
chase me down. I was right. I jumped into the passenger seat of Maria's  
rental and looked back just in time to see him swing the door closed. I  
was safe from Jerry... I couldn't save myself from the other terrors that  
the night was sure to bring.  
~~~  
Max POV  
~~~  
The table was quiet for dinner, as Isabel stewed over my secrets, and  
Michael tried to stay away from her to keep safe. My parents had spent  
most of the night asking me about my trip until the one word answers got to  
be too much for them, and all we could do was fall to silence. They wanted  
to forget about the night before. I couldn't blame them, especially with  
me and Isabel preoccupying ourselves with dealing with each other, rather  
than comforting them with some sort of white lie to make them feel safe in  
their homes again. We didn't think of that then though. That was always  
our problem. We never cared about the world around us, like leaders  
should, as much as we cared about the world between us.  
  
I didn't know or care who it was when I heard the phone ring in the  
kitchen, but that person was about to become my favorite person on the  
planet as I nearly tipped my chair to get to the phone first. I only  
briefly saw my mother's eyes widen in surprise before she sank back into  
her seat.  
  
"Hello," I said, pressing the living room phone to my ear.  
  
"Hey Max," Maria's comforting voice said. There was something in her voice  
that I couldn't quite read, but I let it pass, reassuring myself with the  
brightness of her voice. "You are going to love me..." she said, her voice  
slightly hushed but loud enough to be heard over the commotion behind her.  
  
"Okay," I said, taking the bait. "Why am I going to love you?"  
  
"I'm bringing someone home with me," she said, and I held my breath. Liz  
was coming home? I didn't say anything, not wanting to be wrong and too  
afraid to ask. After a rather long pause she added, "Aren't you going to  
ask me who?"  
  
"How did you do it?" I asked, taking Maria's hopeful tone as enough of an  
answer. Only Maria.  
  
"I don't know really," she said, and some more of that unreadable emotion  
escaped into her voice. "Listen; let's just talk when we get there. Our  
flight gets in at twelve thirty five. Can you pick us up?"  
  
"I'll be there," I said, looking in at my family. "But I don't know if  
I'll be alone."  
~~~~~  
Isabel left the dinner table early, mumbling some excuse about school  
before sulking up the stairs. I wished Alex were here. He would be able  
to help her. He always seemed to help her get things in perspective, even  
if he didn't know what was going on.  
  
Watching their relationship develop had probably been a big part of what  
helped me push myself into the future. While Maria and Michael took the  
dysfunctional relationship to entirely new levels, and while they both  
insisted on putting me and Alex in the middle of their constant feuding,  
Isabel and Alex found this solid middle ground. Every time I found myself  
in some hole of self-pity, I would look at them, and I realized that, no  
matter how my life turned out, I had done something right by my sister by  
saving Liz Parker's life. She never would have found Alex if I hadn't and  
she never would have found the person that she could be. No matter how  
much I hurt because of what I did, I had done right by my family, and that  
was the only consolation that I could find.  
  
I offered to do the dishes for my mother, wanting some silence for my own  
thoughts. I would have to tell them about Liz. I couldn't just stow her  
away in my room, and a part of me knew that. I just didn't know how to  
tell them.  
  
As I wandered up to my room, hearing the quiet noise from the television  
where my parents were quietly watching some primetime drama, I couldn't get  
Liz out of my head. It seemed almost ludicrous that I had found her.  
After years and years, I had just stumbled onto her, and I would see her in  
just a matter of hours. The thought was both exhilarating and terrifying.  
  
The door to my room was slightly open when I got to the top of the stairs,  
shining a beam of light that I knew I had turned out onto the beige carpet.  
Gently, I tapped the door open, and found my sister sitting on my bed,  
staring at a picture on my desk. A picture of the five of us from  
graduation that I had taken while I tried to use the timer on my camera.  
It had always looked disturbingly lopsided, with nearly an extra inch  
beside the place that I had slid into on the right side.  
  
"You left a space for her," Isabel said, never taking her eyes from the  
picture. "I never noticed it before, but that's what it was. You were  
leaving a place for her even though she wasn't there. Even though she  
hadn't been there for years." I looked at the picture as she spoke. I'd  
never seen it either, but as she said the words, they seemed to make sense.  
The picture would have been perfect, had someone else been beside me.  
Right where she would have been. Where she should have been.  
  
"Max, I need you to talk to me," Isabel said, her eyes scanning my face. I  
could hear the tightness in her voice; I could feel how I was hurting her,  
and suddenly, it didn't matter how I told her about Liz. She just needed  
to know. "I can't do this again. I can't watch you slip back into who you  
were. I can't lose my brother again." Her voice broke, and before I knew  
what I was saying, words were tumbling out.  
  
"I found Liz," I said in a rush, "in a supermarket in Portland. That's why  
Maria left. I told Liz that I would meet her, and I knew I couldn't, so I  
sent Maria, and they're both coming back to Roswell. They'll be here in a  
few hours." The words were out in a matter of seconds, and silence hung  
before us in thick strands.  
  
Isabel's eyes widened slowly as the reality slipped into her mind, and her  
mouth began to move slowly, but no words came out. "You... She... And  
Maria..." Her voice trailed away and then suddenly strengthened as she  
jumped to her feet and screamed one word: "Michael!"  
~~~~~  
Jerry POV  
~~~~~  
I watched until the brake lights faded into the heavy mist that seemed to  
cling to Portland in the rare absences of the rain. She'd never left me  
before. I never really thought she would. But I'd underestimated her  
past. I'd underestimated her.  
  
There was a vague recognition when I saw the blonde woman in our home that  
night. I didn't realize who she was until hours later, as I stared at the  
television in a stupor. It was like a slap to the face. Not that she was  
in our home. That I had been lied to. She had never lied to me. Not  
until she found her past.  
  
She loved me... once. I know that. She wears her emotions in her eyes.  
She always has, and I know that once, when everything was sweet and new,  
she had let herself forget-let herself believe in love. There are only two  
paths of control, though: love and fear, and I have never been naïve enough  
to think that any sway in the former. Not with what I knew of her past.  
Apparently I still didn't know enough though, because she was gone. And  
nothing could have prepared me for what that felt like.  
~~~~~  
Liz POV  
~~~~~  
I slept through most of the plane ride, and pretend to whenever I woke up.  
I didn't want to face Maria. I didn't want her to ask me, because I knew  
that if she did, I would tell her everything, and I couldn't risk that. I  
had to be able to leave, and she wouldn't let me do that if she knew the  
truth.  
  
She warned me as we got on the plane that she thought Max would have to  
tell them--his family. As our plane landed, I asked myself for the  
millionth time what I was doing. But it was too late for second guesses.  
I was surprised to find only Max waiting for us in baggage claim, and even  
more surprised when Maria rushed up and threw her arms around him, wrapping  
him in a friendly hug. It looked so natural. I felt so out of place.  
  
"How was your flight?" he asked neutrally, reaching for a piece of luggage  
that he must have recognized as Maria's. He hadn't looked me in the eye  
since I saw him.  
  
"You know how I feel about flying," she said, grabbing the bag that she had  
watched me pack before I had the chance to and signaling for me to follow  
as we walked away from baggage claim. "And she slept the whole way so I  
had to play solitaire."  
  
There was an easiness between them, something that I knew only came with  
years of hard work, trust, and a deeper kind of connection than I had felt  
with anyone in years. Watching them, I felt something tighten in my chest.  
I was on the outside now. I wasn't one of them anymore.  
  
"Do they know she's here?" I heard Maria ask as I gently tuned back into  
their conversation.  
  
"Yeah," he said. "I had to tell them." He looked at me for the first  
time, as if to gauge my reaction, and I felt a wave of emotion. He turned  
away quickly though, leaving me with no time to examine that. "They  
thought that it would be better if I came alone though. And Isabel has  
been on the phone with Alex since eight. Thank god for night minutes," he  
mumbled, a tight smiled gracing his features.  
  
"When is he coming home?" Maria asked. They lead the way a few feet before  
me, so I simply lingered behind and listened, trying to convince myself  
that I wanted to be the outsider--that I wanted this. That I needed this.  
  
"Probably tomorrow," Max answered, sighing as he ran a hand through his  
inky black hair. "He's trying to get standby so that he doesn't pay a  
small fortune." Max shrugged and Maria laughed at something I didn't  
understand. "Anyway, he's coming back soon." He looked at me. "He can't  
wait to see you. He says "hi." Max paused and then continued with a soft  
smile. "And a lot more that I can't remember." I smiled despite myself.  
  
"So where are we going?" Maria asked as we reached the entrance. A hot  
rush of New Mexico air rushed forward to greet us and I nearly gasped.  
Neither Max nor Maria seemed to notice and we continued toward the parking  
lot.  
  
"We're going to my house. I know it's late," he added, directing it to me,  
"but no one wanted to wait." He paused, making all of us wait in the  
parking lot. "It's up to you though. It can wait until tomorrow, if you  
want to." There was so much emotion in his eyes, and I could tell he was a  
big reason that everyone had stayed up. He wanted the answers so badly.  
Answers that I could give him. I couldn't just tell him no. Not after all  
this time.  
  
"It's fine," I said, and he smiled again, letting a wave of warmth that had  
nothing to do with the heat flow through me.  
  
"Good." And we started walking again. When he stopped at a fairly new  
black SUV, I almost kept walking.  
  
"Where's the jeep?" I asked, vacantly searching the parking structure.  
  
"I made him sell it," Maria said. "The back seat shot a spring up my-"  
  
"It got unreliable," Max said, cutting Maria off with surprising accuracy.  
"Even with the little "tricks" we used, it was dying, and I decided that it  
was time for something new." I nodded, irrationally narrowing my eyes on  
the car before me as Max unlocked the doors. I had never been fond of the  
jeep as I constantly teased Max about its flaws and age. Still, that car  
had held some of my most vivid high school memories, and it was gone. I  
wondered what else had disappeared while I was away.  
  
Maria and Max talked comfortably in the front while I gathered up the  
courage for the speech I knew was coming. They didn't ask me the routine  
questions that you would expect since we hadn't seen each other in years.  
They almost seemed to realize that I needed to think. Still, Roswell was  
much too small to allow me much time to think, and mostly I found myself  
gazing out the window at the places I used to know. After a couple  
minutes, I realized that Max had taken a detour around The Crashdown, but I  
wasn't sure if I was grateful or bothered. I would have to go back before  
I left, I realized. I couldn't just come back and forget about them. It  
wouldn't be fair to them.  
  
Before I could dwell anymore on my family, Max was pulling into his  
driveway, his headlights illuminating the familiar path, with the same  
tapered bushes and trim cut grass.  
  
Suddenly, the past collided into me, slamming me with memories that I had  
buried a long time ago. Memories that I wasn't ready to face myself. And  
a secret that I had vowed to keep. Suddenly, I wasn't sure if I was ready. 


End file.
